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Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Growing Cannabis Bonded By A Love Of A Plant

Growing Cannabis Bonded By A Love Of A Plant

By gaining the trust of farmers, H. delves goes into the industry, capturing the process of cannabis cultivation from start to finish from a non-biased perspective. With laws against marijuana changing and public opinion shifting towards acceptance, this community of marijuana farmers are coming out of their greenhouses, building bigger, and growing plants out in the open, more exposed and confident than ever before. H. Lee: was living in Humboldt County at the time. He was there for love, not pot, and not for love of pot. The year was 2010 and Prop 19 was an initiative on the California ballot. There was an energy ripping through the community unlike any other period that I had been there, and so I decided to turn my lens on what was literally happening in his backyard. Big changes were on the horizon and he knew he had an advantage being on the inside to document that change and share a unique culture, one that most people had never experienced. Everything was surprising to me since cannabis cultivation was never on my radar: the size of the plants and the actual garden plots to the fact every one in three neighboring counties seemed to be involved in the industry in one way or another, whether they were growers, trimmers, wholesalers, sellers of dirt and grow materials, cooks, gardeners. It’s a community like no other open yet closed and secret, trusting yet cautious, light yet dark and comprised of people from every walk of life. CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) helicopters would routinely fly over the grow scenes during harvest time in the fall, but nothing ever happened on my watch. Though I promised to use a pseudonym if the project was ever published, some farms and farmers weren’t interested in the exposure. Seasonal workers the trimmers were much more open. During that period, it was an unorganized large industry with an anti-establishment attitude, full of mom-and-pop growers scattered in the hills, many who chose to grow pot to help subsidize other dreams. He learned about a close-knit community that is also bonded by a love of a plant and a desire to see it legal; or people who wish to live off the land, off the grid, or simply wanted to cash in on the seemingly easy to grow and sell crop.